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Comics A.M. | 'Nimona' shortlisted for National Book Awards

Awards | Noelle Stevenson's Nimona has made the shortlist for the National Book Awards, only the third graphic novel to make it that far. At 23, Stevenson is apparently the youngest NBA finalist ever. Nimona is based on an idea Stevenson began toying with in high school and developed into her senior thesis at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She started posting the comic online, and a literary agent spotted it and signed her on. "I don’t know if I actually expected anything to come from signing with an agent — I assumed I’d self-publish, like most webcomic creators did," she said. "Then my agent called me when I was in the middle of a class critique to tell me that he had sold it to HarperCollins, and that was that." [Comic Riffs]

Conventions | The official attendance figure for year's New York Comic Con is 167,000, up from last year's 150,000. (That counts the number of people who went in and out, so someone with a four-day pass would count as four people.) Official attendance at Comic-Con International is 130,000, but comic con expert Rob Salkowitz says the two can't be compared directly because of differences in the way attendance is calculated — and because many events outside the San Diego Convention Center don't require a badge. At any rate, neither of these is the largest comic convention in the world: That would be Japan's Comiket, with more than half a million people, and two shows a year. [Fortune]

Conventions | An ABC News team followed Marvel editor Nick Lowe around New York Comic Con. [ABC News]

Creators | Adam Shatz profiles Riad Shattouf, whose graphic memoir The Arab of the Future tells of his childhood in France, Libya and Syria. The book took the top prize for Album of the Year at Angouleme. [The New Yorker]

Creators | Berkeley Breathed talks about his return to Bloom County in an interview for NPR's Fresh Air. [NPR]

Digital comics | ComiXology's strength in the comics market is not as much of an asset to Amazon as it might be, says Tim Beyers. Even though comiXology dominates the $100 million market in digital comics, Kindle sales continue to flag due to competition from other tablets and the elimination of in-app buying. [The Motley Fool]

Comics | James Whitbrooks rounds up 10 horror comics to get you in the mood for Halloween. [io9]

Festivals | The Wasatch Arts and Comics Festival in Provo, Utah, is a smaller, more personal alternative to Salt Lake Comic Con; Brantz Woolsey, who will be giving lessons on how to make a mini-comic, says he first discovered the joys of an indie-comics festival when he went to the Small Press Expo last year. [Salt Lake Tribune]